I never understood this. How Disk Utility is supposed to know about eventual new permissions coming with a system update? Can anyone explain this to me and if applying permissions repair as part of the update is risk-free, before saying it is recommended? For now, this looks to me like nothing more than a kind of voodoo.

You are correct, this is a kind of voodoo. Early versions of OSX had big problems with corrupting permissions ("permissions rot"). Repairing them periodically was a useful maintenance step. Not any longer.

You are correct, this is a kind of voodoo. Early versions of OSX had big problems with corrupting permissions ("permissions rot"). Repairing them periodically was a useful maintenance step. Not any longer.

Even Apple support has a long list of permission errors that you can just ignore.

I had already tried to reinstall SL and then 10.6.3 combo and that didn't work.

In the near future I'll be buying a new iMac. I'll be transferring data anyway so, at that point, I can wipe the drive, get everything updated to the latest, see how that goes... and then my Wife gets the computer (she's using a G5 20"/Tiger at the moment).

You answered my question. If you simply downloaded the update and applied it without running Disk Utility to at least check the condition of your hard drive then you have no business complaining about any problems you may have. If you failed to make a backup of your data you have no business complaining about problems either.*

Wiseguy. You like to show your the expert, don't ya? Except you aren't.

Ofcourse he trusts an official Apple update and the average Apple user expects that the update procedure does a self check beforehand (even if it doesn't), they don't 'prepare'! We all should expect a basic self integrity check anyway.

Even if you prepare, that doesn't mean the actual update procedure will just work fine. Because you are talking about hardware level here, or software permissions (the latter is being handled by the updater too). Disk Utility doesn't know about possible software update issues that become clear in an updater batch script! That's not its tasks and it couldn't know.

It's a myth that you need to do a Disk Uility HD check before updating. Not that it hurts ofcoirsr, but most of the problems arise when the updater shell script finds something unexpected and doesn't know how to deal with it.
Eg cross-dependency, conflicting software setup, exceptions. All stuff that is flagged okay in 'disk utility land'.

Lastly, who are you to decide wheter he has the right to complain or not? Are you the*the Chief Of Update Police?*

Quote:

Yes, you need to prepare for any update you apply to your system. How do you know your hard drive doesn't have issues that would foul up an update? How do you know your system is healthy and not corrupted? Applying any update to a system of unknown stability is asking for trouble.

1.
The Graphics drivers or Quicktime is vastly improved. To which I say about time.
2.
Sync through Mobile Me to me iPhone is somewhat better but they still have issues.
3.
Overall the system is snappier. I know that is cliche but it is a fact and might have something to do with fixed graphics drivers. Whatever it is the system just feels faster once it is booted up.

Some of the bad points:

1.
Finder has problems I've never seen before. This maybe due to responding to multi finger jestures.
2.
Boot up seems to take longer.
3.
While syncing is better it still isn't perfect.

Seems to be a very solid update overall. I've been installing a lot of software lately and generally find things do install quickly.